Until 1984, the Padres had never won a thing. But that summer and fall, San Diego clinched not only the NL West but a spot in the World Series. Twenty-five years later, those Padres reflect on ...

San Diego Padres players celebrate in the locker room at Jack Murphy Stadium on Oct. 7, 1984, after defeating the Chicago Cubs and winning the National League pennant. The Padres advanced to their first World Series, where they were defeated by the Detroit Tigers in five games. (1984 file photo / Union-Tribune)

San Diego Padres players celebrate in the locker room at Jack Murphy Stadium on Oct. 7, 1984, after defeating the Chicago Cubs and winning the National League pennant. The Padres advanced to their first World Series, where they were defeated by the Detroit Tigers in five games. (1984 file photo / Union-Tribune)

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On cold, snowy days in central Ohio, Eddie Lee Whitson sometimes likes to relax in his den and watch an old video.

It's from Oct. 4, 1984. Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. The Chicago Cubs had won the first two games of the best-of-five-game playoff, 13-0 and 4-2. The Padres' season rested that evening on the right arm of Whitson, the team's starting pitcher.

"That day I will never forget because it was probably the day of my whole life," said Whitson, now 54 and living in Dublin, Ohio. "Talking about it now still raises the hair on my arms."

It's been 25 years since the Padres' first World Series season. Players from that team now are enjoying retirement or second careers. Two are dead.

But a quarter-century of reflection helps shed light on many unsung and behind-the-scenes details that shaped it. In retrospect, these moments seem even more relevant or provocative to them now with the passage of time.

It's why Whitson still can feel the noise from Game 3. It's why manager Dick Williams said first baseman Steve Garvey "probably got a lot more credit than he deserved." It's also why Williams still gets angry about then-National League President Chub Feeney.

A look back, 25 years later:

Graig and Goose

In Williams' first two seasons as Padres manager in 1982 and 1983, the Padres finished 81-81 twice. To overcome mediocrity in '84, Williams said the club needed a power-hitting third baseman and an overpowering relief pitcher. General Manager Jack McKeon unsuccessfully tried to obtain Montreal Expos third baseman Tim Wallach and Cubs reliever Lee Smith. Instead, the team signed free agent Yankees reliever Goose Gossage in January 1984 and received Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles in a trade on March 30, just three days before the season opener.

Their acquisitions proved to be the team's missing ingredients, but not so much because of what they provided on the field, team members say today. More so, it was because unlike the Padres of today, the front office was sending a message to the team that it was doing what it took to win a pennant.

“We struggled for runs in '83,” pitcher Mark Thurmond said. “When we got Gossage and Nettles, we felt like we had a good chance to compete.”

Gossage agreed to a five-year, $6.25 million salary, which at the time made him the highest-paid pitcher ever. It's a stark contrast in message from this season, when the Padres front office tried to unload its best pitcher, Jake Peavy, largely to save money.

“It just seemed to jump-start a lot of guys inside that locker room,” Whitson said.

It also gave the team a mentoring element it needed. The '84 Padres had several young contributors that year. Outfielder Kevin McReynolds, outfielder Tony Gwynn, Thurmond and starting pitcher Andy Hawkins were among 11 regular players who had less than four seasons of experience in the majors. Gossage and Nettles had 28 seasons combined and had played in six combined World Series.

“They used to stay after the game, talk to the kids and our young pitchers, have a beer with them and talk baseball, talk about what went on that day,” said Williams, now 80. “Garvey always showed up on time and did his work. He got a lot more credit than he probably deserved, but he never hung around afterward. These two guys, Gossage and Nettles, certainly did, and they were very instrumental in our success.”

The nerve

The mix of young players and veterans formed a chemical balance so smooth that Williams called only one team meeting that season. But what a meeting it was.

Williams can't pinpoint the date exactly but remembers it happening in the second half of the season at Pittsburgh. The Padres played the Pirates in late July and entered the series with a seven-game division lead. After two games with the Pirates, they had lost three in a row.

The meeting lasted about a minute. The theme was relaxation. It went something like this:

“The nerve by your finger may run up your arm, and if you've got a sore leg, it may run up your leg,” Williams recounted recently. “But all of your nerves go into one place, and that's what can cause you a problem. That nerve is called the anal nerve, and if you have an anal nerve that's bothering you, you're going to have some trouble.”

“Some of the guys didn't know what the heck I was talking about,” Williams said. “Some of the guys did. Eventually they found out I meant to just not get a tight (rear end).”

The gruff Williams didn't ordinarily call many meetings in other seasons, but this group seemed especially low-maintenance. In addition to Nettles and Gossage, veteran first baseman Garvey (14 seasons) and utilityman Kurt Bevacqua (13 seasons) showed by their calm demeanors that it was “no time to panic,” said Garry Templeton, the team's shortstop.

Playing on such an even keel, the Padres started the season 10-2, never fell below .500 all season, never lost more than seven in a row (in May) and never won more than six consecutively.

“We pretty much policed ourselves,” Templeton said. “The vets would get with the young guys and let them know what was what.”

The fight

On Aug. 12, 1984, the Padres held a 10-½-game lead over the second-place Atlanta Braves. They entered the last game of a four-game series in Atlanta having won two of the first three. They wanted a knockout punch on a hot, humid day in the South. But apparently so did Atlanta starting pitcher Pascual Perez, who drilled the game's first pitch into the back of leadoff hitter Alan Wiggins.

It was the first shot across the bow.

In the second inning, with Perez at bat, Whitson nearly hit him with the first pitch and received a warning from the plate umpire. In the fourth inning, with Perez batting again, Whitson threw three straight fastballs inside. Whitson and Williams were ejected as a result. Williams then retreated to the clubhouse and watched the game on television.

“We only wanted to go after one guy,” Williams said. “We were trying to finish off what the Atlanta Braves started.”

Perez was targeted again at the plate in the sixth and eighth. In the sixth, Padres pitcher Greg Booker threw over his head. Booker and acting manager Ozzie Virgil were ejected.

In the eighth, Padres pitcher Craig Lefferts finally hit Perez, causing a bench-clearing brawl. Finally, in the ninth, Atlanta pitcher Donnie Moore drilled Nettles at the plate, triggering another fight and the ejection of Atlanta manager Joe Torre. Seventeen people, including 12 Padres, ended up being ejected from the game, which the Padres lost 5-3.

Feeney, who died in 1994, slapped Williams with a 10-game suspension and $10,000 fine. Torre was suspended three games and received a $1,000 fine.

The Padres won their next two games and never held less than an eight-game, first-place lead the rest of the season. But 25 years later, Williams is still miffed.

“They said I couldn't control my players. Torre didn't control his,” Williams said by phone from his home near Las Vegas. “I got the brunt of it.”

And he still doesn't like Feeney for it.

“I talked with a fellow who was president of the league and later became president of the San Diego Padres, which I thought was a big joke,” Williams said. “He was a guy who used to have a three-martini lunch.”

Coming home

After clinching the division title and finishing with a 92-70 regular-season record, the Padres appeared overmatched in Chicago in Games 1 and 2. The season looked lost. On the way home for Game 3, the Padres were waiting at the airport in Chicago for their plane, which wasn't there on time. Standing on the tarmac in the cold, the Padres watched the Cubs promptly board their plane to San Diego.

“They had all the momentum going for them,” Nettles said. “I remember it as a slap in the face that we had to stand there and watch them. Our plane wasn't there. Theirs was. It was adding insult to injury while we were shivering on the runway.”

Upon arrival in San Diego, the team boarded buses back to Jack Murphy Stadium to retrieve their cars. It was about 9:45 p.m., but almost 2,000 fans were waiting to boost the team's spirits. The players were moved. “I've never seen Templeton so emotional,” Williams said.

The next morning, Whitson got up and took a walk around Lake Poway. It was all on him. It was his first postseason appearance.

“I'd take a little walk walk around the lake to get my legs, to kind of get my blood flowing,” Whitson said. “It wasn't like a lot of days I'd normally pitch on. It was just a little bit faster walk that day. When I got back home I told my wife: 'Don't fix much to eat. I'm ready to go.' ”

So was the hometown crowd of 58,346. Earlier that year, San Diego fans didn't seem that interested. In June, the first-place Padres drew just 9,271 to a game against the second-place Braves.

This day was different.

“You could actually feel the mound vibrate, it got so loud in there,” Whitson said.

Whitson had early struggles and fell behind 1-0 in the second inning on a single by Ron Cey. Williams considered taking Whitson out for a pinch hitter in the fifth until Templeton, batting eighth in front of Whitson, doubled home two runs for the team's first lead of the series, 2-1. The Padres won 7-1. Whitson struck out six in eight innings and gave up five hits before Gossage retired the side in the ninth.

Although Garvey's game-winning, two-run home run in Game 4 still gets all the hype, it might not have happened without Whitson's outing in Game 3. It almost seems forgotten in Padres history, perhaps because it happened so quickly. The game lasted just two hours, 19 minutes.

“Everybody remembers the big hits, the (Garvey) home run off of Lee Smith,” Templeton said with a laugh. “They don't remember the kind of competitor Ed Whitson was. You ask most people, they won't remember he pitched Game 3. Garvey gets one big hit, he gets the MVP.”

The Padres won Game 4, 7-5, on Garvey's ninth-inning homer in San Diego. In Game 5, the Padres rallied from a 3-0 deficit at home, tying the game in the seventh on a ground ball that slipped through the legs of Cubs first baseman Leon Durham. They won 6-3 to advance to the club's first World Series.

It was a milestone that had been reached without much firepower. In the regular season, the Padres averaged just 4.23 runs per game. Only two of 23 National League champions since then have scored at a lesser clip. Not surprisingly, 14 players from such an efficient club are still involved in the game as coaches or scouts.

“Between Jack McKeon and Dick Williams, they put together a good nucleus, a team that would fight together and a team that knew it was capable of beating anybody,” outfielder Bobby Brown said.

After the Cubs series, the Padres ran into one of baseball's all-time best buzz saws, the Detroit Tigers, who had started the season 35-5.

The Padres lost the World Series in five games. Williams still catches flak for letting Gossage talk him out of walking Detroit slugger Kirk Gibson in the eighth inning of Game 5. At the time, the Tigers were ahead 5-4 with two runners on base. Gibson ended up sending a Gossage pitch into the right-field upper deck to ice the Series.

Last year, Williams and Gossage were inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“It's my fault for letting him do it, but I don't think we were going to beat Detroit anyway,” Williams said. “I'll take the brunt on that. I'll stand next to my Hall of Fame plaque and tell you that if you want to see me in Cooperstown this July.”